CHRISTMAS in South Sudan takes place during the dry season. Women begin saving during the heavy downpours of August so that they can serve their children chicken and rice on the day — a treat enjoyed just once a year in some families. “Their mothers work very hard to give that to them,” says Rosemary Wilfred, communications, media, and advocacy lead in Tearfund’s South Sudan office.
This week, women are busy baking biscuits not only for their own families, but for those unable to afford them. “It’s almost like you are not celebrating Christmas unless you have these biscuits,” Ms Wilfred says. “What is interesting about this is you find the most humble families are the ones who give out. . . They know what it’s like not to have food for their family.”
She tells the story as a counter to the grim news that tends to dominate what little coverage of South Sudan makes it in to the British press. A former journalist at Eye Radio — a station that at one time broadcast to a million people — she chose as the thesis for her Master’s degree (taken online at Liverpool John Moores University) “the framing of South Sudan by Western media”.
“Negative news sells faster,” she observes. “South Sudan has come a long way. We have a very rich culture that we are very proud of.” Eleven years after the outbreak of civil war during a bleak Advent in 2013 (News, 20 December 2013), “relative peace” prevails. “Calm is returning in most areas. There are areas where people are able to cultivate. People go to church; people celebrate Christmas.”
NONE of this is to downplay the extent of the challenges facing South Sudan, the world’s youngest country. Thirteen years since it celebrated independence, in the wake of a 21-year civil war that left two million dead (said to be the largest number of civilians killed in any conflict since the Second World War), two-thirds of the population live in extreme poverty.
TOM PRICE/TEARFUND 2024A service at St John’s, Kajo Keji, South Sudan
Amid an economic crisis, unprecedented flooding affecting 1.4 million people, and conflict-related insecurity, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reports that 1.7 million people are facing extreme food shortages, and famine is taking hold in some areas. It is Africa’s largest refugee crisis: 2.3 million have fled to neighbouring countries, and there are 2.2 internally displaced people. Currently, thousands of people are arriving in South Sudan each day, fleeing the conflict in Sudan: the total number of refugees and returnees is approaching one million. With the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, and only about one third of the population literate, South Sudan is ranked third in the “Failed States Index”, behind Sudan and Somalia.
Tearfund has been on the ground since the 1970s. Its emergency response includes food assistance for refugees and returnees, a flood response in Jonglei state, and malnutrition screening and treatment for children. But longer-term programmes are also under way, Ms Wilfred reports, from training for farmers to a scheme in which “lead mothers” are supported to address malnutrition at household level, with lessons in nutrition and cooking. One self-help group of women has raised enough money to purchase a grinding mill, while traditional beading can raise large sums.
A lack of water has caused many schools to close and villages to be abandoned. It also increases the risk of gender-based violence, as women walk for miles in search of water, along “bushy, long, and very lonely” roads. The torch to be found in the “dignity kits” given to women are another reminder of the risk of such violence, present even on the short walk to latrines outside their homes. There is a goal to ensure that women are at the forefront of every project, Ms Wilfred reports.
The deeper work of changing the culture will take time, she says, conscious that “there is still a section of people who look at women as weaker when it comes to politics, or any other thing.”
But, “the women are in everything,” she says. “Even if the men choose not to see, the women were in the bush in the liberation struggle, they were behind the scenes in the conflict, they were in the negotiations.”
IN THE absence of a strong state, the Church has, for more than a century, been a vital — even primary — provider of services in South Sudan (and previously Sudan). “The Church was often the only organisation offering any support in terms of health or education in places deemed too dangerous for other aid workers,” the journalist Peter Martell writes in First Raise a Flag, a first-hand account of the country’s struggle for independence and peace. Its bishops, he says, were “about the last left who dared speak out to condemn the warring forces” (News, 21 August 2015).
As another journalist, Ms Wilfred covered the conflict at close sight. She was live on air in July 2016 when presidential guards at the State House, in Juba, began shooting one another, relaying reports from a colleague present at the scene. “Tension was high, people were running, and stray bullets were hitting people,” she recalls. “We were able to give some safety instructions.” Most important, her colleague was able to confirm that the Vice-President, Riek Machar, had left the scene alive — news that helped to de-escalate tensions.
TOM PRICE/TEARFUND 2024Community members celebrate an adult literacy centre practising Transforming Communities and providing trauma relief in Kajo Keji
Born in South Sudan, she left with her family in 1983 as a toddler — one of millions who fled the country during the civil war. She was among the 2.5 million who returned after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2005. This is said to have been the biggest peacetime movement of people since the end of the Second World War.
“I was always curious, because I had no memories of South Sudan,” she says. “You hear stories from people, but you are aways curious to come back and see what has become of my ancestral home.” The return was “a bit exciting and disappointing at the same time”, she recalls.
“Exciting, because for the first time you are on the soil. . . But also it was hard to see the destruction, and, really, there was no trace of any family, no homes, no relatives: it was literally a bare land, just tall grass everywhere.” A vivid memory is the “rampant” landmines, and the people who risked their lives to cultivate land regardless. Her first job was as a teacher at a missionary school, established by the Roman Catholic Church to encourage people to return with their children.
Most of the diaspora, who fled not only to the country’s six border countries, but to the United States, Australia, and the UK, are still not convinced that South Sudan is “a good place or a safe space”, she observes. “Homes were destroyed to the ground. Some are afraid to go and start from scratch.” Some of her relatives in Uganda have now fled three times, and fear another outbreak of fighting.
She also senses “some level of identity crisis, especially among the Gen Zs”. In Uganda, her own children ate Ugandan food, she says. “They don’t know my language: they speak English.” Her daughter told her that she had never told people at school that she was South Sudanese, expecting that she would be told, “Oh, you are the ones who are fighting all the time.”
But her sense is that people are “beginning to embrace” South Sudanese culture. “Nobody was telling us about that in exile. . . Each country teaches their own things to you. But now we are back, and trying to sit with elders, and they are talking to us about the culture. It’s beautiful, but it will take time for people to adopt that, because we were not raised like that.”
DECEMBER marks the 11th anniversary of the outbreak of civil war in South Sudan, when fighting between government troops escalated into a full-blown conflict characterised by acts of horrific depravity on both sides. Last month, the country’s first-ever general elections, due to take place this month, were postponed for another two years. The transitional government established by the 2018 revitalised peace agreement remains in place.
TOM PRICE/TEARFUND 2024Gladys, 16, attends the adult literacy centre in Kajo Keji, and hopes to one day train to become a nurse.
Ms Wilfred, a veteran of reporting on her country’s tortuous journey from independence, remains phlegmatic, observing that there is much to be resolved before elections can take place. She rattles off a census, the repatriation of refugees and IDPs, reconstitution of the electoral body, and development of the constitution.
But she remains hopeful. “The small efforts that people make, as charity organisations or the Church, have been very instrumental in trying to rebuild what has been lost,” she says. “Because the conflict was more than 20 years, it’s not possible to rebuild overnight.”
The distribution of biscuits this Christmas marks one such act — a reminder of God’s instruction not to despise small beginnings, and his rejoicing in the building of foundations.
tearfund.org/campaigns/christmas-appeal-2024-hellen